Tuesday, May 20, 2014

[ Clean Eating Cocoa Applesauce Mini Muffins with Carrot Puree ]


I bought a 5-pound bag of organic carrots and was running out of things to do with them.  Then I thought, "LUNCHES".  I try and have a few things stacked in the freezer for easy-peasy-kid-lunch-making on busy mornings.  

I googled "carrots applesauce cocoa muffins" (the cocoa because I have to hide any strands of orange for fear the kids may toss them *boo*) and found a recipe at The Live-In Kitchen (here).  But.  It had brown sugar.  And way too much white flour.  So - I did some substitution homework (here and here) and came up with this:  a clean, no-white-sugar and no-white-flour recipe.

They are light and not terribly sweet, very different from the chocolately-dense Quinoa muffins.  They are both SUPER good - and these ones have little bits of almond from the almond meal.  This recipe is DEFINITELY a keeper, though it is a little time consuming with the puree.

Now - their recipe also suggests sweet potato instead of carrot for the puree - just a note there.  And since I don't have a food processor, I had to improvise.  Here's what I did ::

Clean Eating Cocoa Applesauce Mini Muffins with Carrot Puree

1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup carrot or sweet potato puree
1/3 cup maple syrup
5 + 1/2 tbsp honey
1 + 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 large eggs
2 tbsp coconut milk
2/3 cup almond meal (Trader Joes)
1 cup gluten-free flour mix (or whole wheat / spelt / other flour **)
1/4 cup Trader Joes chocolate chunks

Directions:

1.  Steam/cook/prepare carrots or sweet potatoes.
2.  Mix butter, applesauce, maple syrup and honey.
3.  (As I don't have a food processor) Place cooked carrots in VitaMix and add eggs.  Blend until pureed.
4. Add carrot/sweet potato mixture to butter mixture.  Mix.
5.  Add baking soda and coconut milk.  Mix lightly.
6.  Stir in almond meal and gluten-free flour mix with a wooden spoon.
7.  spray mini muffin tin with coconut oil spray (Trader Joes), or prepare as you wish.
7.  Bake at 375F for 15minutes, or until done.

yields :: approx 30 mini muffins

** I wanted to try and use coconut flour - but I didn't have enough eggs to substitute.